Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System (UAVS) Applications in Forestry and Plantation Operations: Experiences in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

Unmanned aerial vehicle system (UAVS) or drone gains significant role for acquiring geospatial data especially in forestry and plantation operations. This was made possible by current advancement of consumer drone and availability of open-source UAVS technology for custom-made UAVS. The role of UAVS technology is seen as bridging the gap between field data collection and airborne and spaceborne remote sensing. UAVS offers great details of geospatial data at very high resolution with flexibility of deployment and cloud-free aerial photos. In Malaysia, the usage of UAVS is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM). The benefits of UAVS applications in forestry and plantation operations greatly improve efficiency through fast and timely geospatial data acquisition for various operational applications. In order to utilise UAVS technology, the forest and plantation owners’ choices are either hiring third-party specialist or purchasing UAVS hardware and software with necessary training for own staff. UAVS workflow generally consists of flight mission planning, data acquisition, data processing and output integration into geographic information systems (GIS). In this chapter, various UAVS applications in forestry and plantation operations based on experiences in Sabah and Sarawak are discussed. UAVS applications are infrastructure management, roads, nursery, boundary and encroachment monitoring, nursery management and high conservation value areas (HCV).